On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 03:47 +0000, Richard Neill wrote:
> Olivier Thereaux wrote:
> > Checking HTTP compliance is a good idea, but it's completely out of the
> > scope of the markup validator.
>
> Yes, that is what I was suggesting. The reason for this, is that the
> validator lays such great stress on the importance of using '&amp;'
> instead of '&' in links, and so it only seems natural to do so in an
> HTTP header (which is after all, "just a form of link").
>
> I agree that it's out of scope, but it would be really useful, and this
> must be a common error.
Alas, it could not usually be flagged as an error by an "HTTP compliance
checker" either. I don't think there's anything wrong in general with
placing constructs like "&amp;" in certain parts of URIs, which is what
these HTTP header values are. For example query strings. The
probability of an error is relatively high though, but issuing a warning
(or issuing nothing at all) is the best thing such a checker could do.